


Sound and Vision

by DrGaybelGideon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: I got inspired by the Bowie song and sad over Frederick, Synesthesiaaaaaaaa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7888786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrGaybelGideon/pseuds/DrGaybelGideon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frederick’s childhood is full of light. Literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sound and Vision

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sackoflemons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sackoflemons/gifts).



Frederick’s childhood is full of light. Literally. He speaks and hears in colours, a shy child who spends too long lost amongst the greens and golds of his parent’s voices to pay any attention to what they’re actually saying. It’s a peaceful childhood, spent buried in books he prides himself on being able to read even if he doesn’t truly understand.

His trips to counsellors and neurologists start when his first teachers complain at six. He’s tested for ADHD, deafness, bullying, any probable causes or labels that could be stuck on a child who stares off blankly into space when talked to. Frederick tests negative for all of them, and pays attention to his teachers once he’s read all the comics in the doctor’s waiting room.  
He doesn’t think to bring up the colours. He’s always assumed everyone could see them, and his young mind doesn’t want to consider the alternative- that there’s something wrong with him.

He learns to avoid the cafeteria and any major sports events in high school after his first day spent clutching his eyes and sobbing in a toilet. Migranes get him more trips, scans as well this time, and shaky diagnosis of light sensitivity involving indoor sunglasses as treatment. Apparently his proclamation that he’d rather die was a little melodramatic, but his mother accepts it and doesn’t make him wear them. Concern at the thought of one day being forced to walk into class looking like a blind man makes him go a little further and subtly drop them behind a radiator with a remarkably satisfying purple clang. They’re never spoken of again.

Clarity and a reasonable explanation come at 23, when he’s blankly scrolling Wikipedia, hangover refusing to let him do anything productive with his day. ‘Synesthesia’ is the name of his apparent disorder, projective type, he’s strangely excited to diagnose himself with. It’s Chromesthesia by the time he’s halfway down the article, the association of sound and vision, the reason he-  
There’s a reason for it.  
Frederick could almost cry with relief.

He’s mastered it by thirty five, and now allows himself to feel an extra wave of smugness whenever he singles out the link between colour and a person’s voice. His secretary’s is red, Alana’s an odd off-mustard. He dislikes Alana’s almost as much as he dislikes Jack Crawford’s, which doesn’t even have a specific colour unless it’s quiet. When it’s loud, it’s an indescribable horrific colour he can only label ‘migrane’. He tends to avoid Jack.  
He’s oddly disappointed by the fact Will Graham’s is brown, having heard so much about the man’s potentially synthetic traits. (He’s never figured out his own to compare it to, but he firmly believes it to be a wonderful one.)  
  
He’s got other patients he’d much rather listen to. Abel Gideon’s voice is a good colour, blue like his eyes but darker. It’s sharp now, like the scalpel in his hands, and it should be red, because everything at the moment is red, his stomach is red and open and it’s both of their faults, he shouldn’t have done this but he doesn’t deserve to die. At least the slap of his organs in the bowl’s not overpoweringly loud. Frederick’s so out of it by the time the ambulance gets there that he can see the movements of the bag over his mouth, little white flutterings of breath that are determined to send him to sleep. The heart monitor in the ambulance is green and sharp, a stab behind his eyes with each beep, but he’s alive.

Hannibal Lecter’s voice is a rich, deep maroon, accented heavily. He trusted that voice. And Alana still will trust that voice, he struggles violently. He will run, because he will not be believed.

Frederick doesn’t know what colour the bullet that shatters his skull is.  
It happened too fast to hear it, which is good, because he’d rather not throw any more colours out of his wardrobe. He plans to burn the checked blazers when he gets home.  
If he gets home. He’s lost muscle mass from an induced coma, so he’s being monitored on that front which means he’d better get used to his private ward.

It’s three weeks after he starts his exercise regime when they unwire his jaw. He’s scared of it, scared to move it in case something goes wrong and the aluminium pins holding his top one together undo themselves. He’s also scared to speak. He’ll know what he sounds like, in the privacy of the ward, talking to himself, and he doesn’t want to sound different.

He does sound different, a weak, grey rasp that more or less manages to form the proper shapes for words when his mother finally arrives. Darker, more tainted somehow. How symbolic, he smiles darkly to himself, remembering the mess under his facial bandage. And then she’s holding him, asking a hundred questions in a rush of warm gold and warmer arms, and she doesn’t seem to have noticed the change or mind when he cries into her shoulder.  
Hannibal hasn’t changed that. But he will change Hannibal, store him in the end cell where Gideon used to lean on the bars and leer and purr, replace blue with red and lock him there.  
The air hums with steel-grey purpose as he settles himself off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Saved this for my darling SackOfLemons because she was always very fond of it!


End file.
